Iran’s legal organ market where sick brokers make £45K a month preying on the poor – trading kidneys, livers and EYEBALLS
SICK organ traders in Iran are preying on the poor and selling their livers, kidneys and EYEBALLS for cash.
A new report shows that brokers working within the LEGAL industry in the Islamic Republic can make £45,000 a month targeting drug addicts and those in desperate need of money.
The National Council of Resistance (NCRI), a group opposed to the hardline regime ruling Iran, has provided Sun Online with the astonishing research.
It shows that people in the Middle Eastern country can sell their kidneys for $10,000 and can make $50,000 selling their livers.
Corneas, which is the front part of the eye, sell for around $20,000 while bone marrow goes for about $10,000.
The NCRI says that lungs and blood plasma are traded as well.
In the report, there are pictures showing organ sale adverts in an area of Tehran known as “Kidney Street” because of the prevalence of desperate people wanting to flog their body parts.
Indeed, despite Iran being among the top oil and gas producers in the world, citizens in their capital city are so impoverished they are willing to sell their healthy organs to feed their families.
CASH FOR KIDNEYS
According to the NCRI, thousands of kidneys are traded every year in the Gulf nation with most of the sellers being aged between 22 and 34.
The report includes links to trading websites where sellers publish their ages, what organs they are willing to sell along with their blood type.
Messages on the site include “hello, I want to see my kidney under the market price” and “willing to sell kidney due to financial problems”.
Another wrote: “God would damn the owner of this website.”
One broker told Iranian news agency ISNA that he started roaming hospitals looking for people willing to sell their kidneys.
He has now expanded his operation and makes up to $56,000 (£45,000) a month.
The broker said: “After two years, I hired several people to roam around hospitals and to find clients for me.
“Then, I hired a few people to somehow get the reports of brain-dead patients from the hospitals for me, and after that, I went on to sell other body organs.”
A second organ dealer openly admitted preying on the poorest members of society.
He said: “Most of those who sell their kidneys are from the lower strata of the society.
“I find them through friends who live in small towns or poor suburbs.”
NCRI spokesman Shahin Gobadi told Sun Online that the organ trade was prevalent in Iran before the US imposed economic sanctions on the country.
He said: “The uptick trend of selling body organs in Iran has nothing with sanctions and was increasing even when the sanctions were lifted.”
Mr Gobadi branded the industry an “untold catastrophe” and a “systemic problem”.
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